


Best $20 Ever Spent

by Winchester_with_Wings



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-07 01:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18862651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchester_with_Wings/pseuds/Winchester_with_Wings
Summary: Requested on Tumblr by @book-loving–anime-chick with the prompts:-Catch me if you can!-Stop texting me weird stuff so late at night-Give it back!Summary: You and Peter work at the local movie theater but sometimes have a little too much fun so you don’t get scheduled together very often.





	Best $20 Ever Spent

**Author's Note:**

> loosely based on a couple of kids I work with.

The managers were seriously considering no longer scheduling you two together.

Even if you asked to work on a Wednesday night for a completely different reason, they were inclined to reject it.

“Peter works that night.”

“So?”

“You distract him from his work,” they’d say.

Sure, you two were best friends and had fun working at the local movie theater but you didn’t really see it that way. The closing duties always got done properly. What does it matter if you had a few laughs and breaks to talk while doing it?

Maybe they saw something you didn’t? Maybe they were listening to you and your best friend Cali gossip about the crew and the rumors about who had crushes on who. You’d hoped that the managers were smart enough to keep the gossip to themselves too. Hopefully, they wouldn’t tell Peter that you had a crush on him.

No. If anything, they were inclined to keep you apart for efficiency. They had to do that with a lot of people too, schedule those who work best together and those that don’t get along or perhaps get along too well…

But they hadn’t officially said no to you and Peter working together all the time. If they had, they wouldn’t have allowed Peter to swap shifts with Ned on Sunday night.

Peter was a tease. He loved riling you up and messing with you. His proudest accomplishment was hiding in an auditorium, waiting in the dark for a solid 5 minutes until he could jump out and scare you. The boy was actually laying on the carpeted ground hiding behind the reclining chairs!

This is probably the perfect example of how you two didn’t work well together.

He probably should’ve been somewhere else doing his job but instead he’d disappeared and gone radio silent, the managers were literally calling for him over the radio and he wasn’t answering.

You were actually doing your job! Ushering the auditorium and picking up trash.

“Y/N!” He jumps out and shouts your name.

“AHH! Peter!” You shout right back at him, throwing an empty cup at his face before collapsing to the ground and covering your face. Your fight or flight complex was actually fight, flight, or fall. “Peter!” You squeal rolling on the ground and laughing. “You almost scared the pee out of me!” Peter hops over the reclining chairs with ease and tries to help you up.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps between his own laughing.

“No, you’re not.”

“You should’ve seen your face!” His laughing is renewed while you get back to work, finishing the auditorium. He’s kind–or perhaps guilty enough–that he helps you by wiping down the recliners.

Later in your shift, you’re texting Cali and telling her about Peter’s latest shenanigans.

“I think he likes you,” she suggests for the thousandth time.

“Nooo he’s just a pain in the ass. He annoys everyone. He’s like that with everyone. It has nothing to do with me,” you respond.

“Don’t put yourself down like that! I really think Peter likes you! You should tell him how you feel!”

“I can’t tell Peter that I like him like that! Then it really will be impossible to work with him. It’ll make it hard to work here and then I’ll have to quit…”

In his typical, annoying fashion, Peter grabs your phone the moment you’re about to set it down. No one’s phone is safe around him. But you hadn’t locked your phone in time either!

“Pete! No!”

“Give it back Peter,” the manager says from their position at Guest Services. He doesn’t listen to them. It was all part of the routine.

“Whoya textin?” he asks, getting ready to scroll through your messages. “Cali?”

“No! Peter, give it back!”

It’s probably a good thing that the theater is absolutely dead on a Sunday night.

“Who does Cali have a crush on? You guys talking about boys?” He wiggles his shoulders and smirks at you. You lunge at him, trying to get your phone back. He dodges you.

“Catch me if you can!”

You engage in a game of cat and mouse running around the theater lobby. He holds it high above his head. You can’t reach it. You pinch his sides and he giggles. Catching him off balance, you two become tangled on the floor in front of your coworkers and manager. Everyone seems to be getting a laugh out of it, including the two of you. But the fact that he still has your phone unlocked and is still trying to read your text messages has your heart racing for a completely different reason. He can’t see those texts! He can’t find out like this!

A guest walks up to box office. You coworker goes back to their position. The manager leaves guest services to come mediate and separate the two of you before making a scene in front of the customers.

“Peter, give it back,” the manager says in their authoritative tone. The managers are usually fun and happy but they’re willing to lay down the law when things get out of hand. Just in time too. Peter scrolls for .5 seconds and then hands over your phone. You lock it right away but you also have no idea what he’s seen.

Your shift ends at midnight. The rest of the night was nice and uneventful with less hijinks from Peter but still fun conversations about friends, school, and summer plans.

Peter has your number. You text quite often too. But never at 2 am when you’re both so obviously tired from working late.

Your phone screen lights up and the vibrations of it on your nightstand wakes you up.

“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever spent $20 on?”

“Well hello to you too,” you text back.

“…” He actually took the time to send those three dots. “So what is it? Or better yet, what’s the best $20 you ever spent?”

“Uh…my iridescent hombre metal water bottle…” It’s probably not the right answer but it’s all you can think of. You and Cali both bought one on a day off at the mall and kept getting them mixed up so they have stickers on them now to tell them apart. “Now stop texting me weird things so late at night. Lol.”

“Don’t you wanna know my answer?”

“Uh sure.”

“Tonight.”

“??”

“I paid Ned $20 to swap shifts with me so I could work with you.”

That stumps you. What does that mean? Why would he do that? Yeah, you guys had fun working together but you could hang outside of work too. You saw each other at school too. So…why would he do that?

“Lol wtf why?” you send that after realizing you’d left him on “read” for about two minutes when normally you guys respond within seconds.

“Because I wanted to work with you tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to see you…”

“Why?”

Then your phone rings. It scares you. Enough that you drop your phone on your face.

“Hello?” you whisper, rubbing your nose. You fluff up your pillow so you’re sitting up in bed, fully awake now. It’s quiet on the other end. “Peter, I swear to god if you’re outside my window and are going to scare me, please don’t,” you beg. You chuckle when you finally hear Peter on the other end chuckling too. “Why are you calling me? What is this all about?”

“Y/N,” he says you name.

“Peter?” you say his name with the intent to make it sound awkward.

“What if I told you that I liked you?”

“Wh–” he cuts you off.

“That I bribed Ned to switch shifts with me so that I could work with you. So I could see you. So I could spend time with you. Because I…” he sighs, “because I like you, ya’know, like that?”

“Um…Peter…” you’re pretty sure your heart has stopped. You’re praying this isn’t one of his pranks. Peter is an annoying dweeb but he wouldn’t do that, right? That’d just be cruel.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Um…I might’ve read your texts to Cali.”

“Oh.”

“Do you really like me?” he asks. You don’t answer him right away, making him stew in the uncomfortable silence. “Y/N?”

“I mean, yeah, Pete. I like you. We’re friends.”

“But do you like me? Like enough to date me?”

“Oh um…yeah…I guess.” Peter sighs. Relieved? Happy? You’re not sure. Peter chuckles. You can imagine him running his fingers through his curly brown hair, the same way he does it when he finds that he’s passed a spanish test.

“So,” he sounds smug all of the sudden like he’s smirking at the phone. “Do you wanna go out sometime?”

“Pretty sure I just answered that.”

“But I wanna hear you say it,” Peter teases. You roll your eyes.

“Yes, Peter, I would like to go out with you. But first you have to answer one question.”

“Shoot.”

“How long have you liked me?”

“Oh, yeah…um…it’s gonna sound bad. But, uh, I kinda called dibs the first day you ever worked at the theater. And I’ve been bribing Ned for shifts every couple of weeks too.”

“Oh my god,” you giggle.

“Yeah, pretty silly huh?”

“No. It makes sense. But you know…once we’re dating, management is definitely not going to let us work together anymore.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to go on a bunch of dates.”


End file.
